As I look around this year’s East Wing show, I stop to consider the curatorial decisions that went into its assemblage – the logic of the space-filling; the intangible emotive rationale behind choices of works; the effortful dilemmas that went into making each room appear effortlessly ‘just so’; the perilous tight-rope act of ensuring the works negotiate their message around each other, becoming stronger in their marriages than if they stood alone.

To this extent, the show is a success – it is, after all, an exhibition about exhibitions, one that invites the viewer to think as much about the efforts of the curators as the artists. I was involved in the show’s early planning stages, and for this I consider myself extremely fortunate. To see the spaces we inhabit, that we study and socialise in, transformed into a powerful and engaging exhibition space is satisfying beyond measure.

It has not, however, been an easy journey, but one filled with late-night meetings, thousands of phone calls and emails, a quest for funding, hundreds of contracts for signature, multiple drafts of the catalogue, exhausting weekends of drilling and hanging, and last-minute toil, which saw the team leaving Somerset House at 3am. It is, I believe, worth every last second.

Before we decided on a direction of any kind, the early consensus of the committee was to simply display works that we enjoyed and wanted to share with the students here. To avoid shoe-horning a disparate array of pieces into an overbearing thematic framework, our rather tongue-in-cheek working title was ‘Stuff We Like’. This decision is what makes the show such a vibrant success. The art always came first, with the team getting the opportunity to create a dream exhibition around the artworks they are most passionate about. Every piece had a champion; this passion for the artworks shines from the walls, and that is something to celebrate next time you enjoy the collection.

Until Jul 2011

ANDREW JONES